That’s why he was so determined not to screw this one up. It wasn’t so much the Secret itself that attracted him. If he was honest, he felt the same about that as he did about Dale. Looked at in one way, it was a really neat idea which explained everything, and he was proud to be one of the chosen few to whom it had been revealed. But if he closed his eyes and looked again, it could seem no more part of him than a new set of clothes, a really zippy outfit that made him look and feel great, but which he could put on or take off depending on how he felt.
Maybe it would be different after his initiation. Anyway, what really mattered wasn’t that but the sense of belonging. For the first time in his life, Pat had a real home and real friends, a stable center and a shared sense of purpose. For that, he was ready to kill, even to die. If he had to go back to the life he was leading before they’d taken him in, he’d be as good as dead anyway.
He lay back and closed his eyes, trying to imagine what the house would look like. It was impossible, of course. It might be large or small, old or new, stucco or brick or wood or aluminum siding. At the moment it was just a number and a street name, but somewhere up ahead of him, getting closer every minute, was a real building on a real block, with real people living in it. Only they weren’t real. Either that, or he wasn’t. Soon he would find out.
A crinkling sound drew his attention. The girl across the aisle was opening a package of cookies. She saw him watching her.
“You want one?”
He hesitated just a second, then smiled.
“Sure.”
She moved over to the empty seat next to the aisle, her long legs dangling down, and handed him the bag.
“Going all the way?” she asked.
He nodded.
“You?”
“Uh huh.”
Beneath the open flaps of the leather jacket, Pat could see her breasts outlined against the T-shirt she had on. They were small and tight, with slightly raised nipples.
“Visiting your family?” he asked.
She shook her head, stirring her dank, bleached hair, the roots already growing out a mousy brown.
“Other way around,” she said.
Her accent was lightly spiced with the sweet sensuality of the South. Pat remembered her getting on in some small town they’d stopped at in the middle of the night.
“How do you mean?”
“I got sick and tired of running interceptions on all the passes my stepdad kept throwing at me.”
Pat frowned.
“You mean he tried to …”
“He sure did. He tried real hard.”
“Did you tell your mom?”
“Uh huh. She said it was all God’s will. Meaning, this guy is my meal ticket, so just play along and keep him sweet so I can sit around here all day without having to do jack shit. So I figured I could do better on my own. This way, if I end up having to peddle my ass, at least I get to keep the cash. You want another cookie?”
Pat took one.
“So you’ve run away from home?” he said. “Jesus.”
All his own fears of rootless dispossession rose up like a waking nightmare. But the girl merely shrugged.
“It’s not that big a deal. I took about fifty bucks and my mother’s charge card. I can forge her signature real easy and it’ll be a couple of weeks before she even notices it’s gone. Till then, I aim to go spastic with the plastic. How ’bout you?”
Pat opened his mouth and closed it again.
“I’m … Well, I … I guess I’m kind of in the same position myself. I lost my job, see. And I heard Atlanta was a good place to find work, so I thought I’d head on down there and see if maybe something will go right for a change.”
The girl nodded.
“You got a place to stay?”
Pat shook his head.
“You?”
“Nope.”
They were silent for a while.
“Listen,” she said at last. “You want to do me a favor? When the bus gets in, you want to make it look like we’re together? Thing is, all these pimps hang around the bus station looking for fresh meat. A friend from school came down last year, real nice person but the worst buckteeth you ever saw. I mean this little gal could eat corn through a picket fence, and they were still all over her like stink on shit. So I’d really appreciate it if you’d kind of stick around for a while.”
Pat hesitated. He knew he should refuse, but he also knew that he couldn’t. This girl’s situation reminded him too much of his own previous existence, after his dad and mom broke up and he’d faded into the blurred anonymity of the streets, sleeping outside and panhandling and searching trash cans for scraps of half-eaten hamburger.
“I’d be glad to,” he said.
She smiled, a sweet pucker of her thin red lips.
“We’d better meet. I’m Cindy Glasser.”
Pat thought furiously. He couldn’t give his own name, of course.
“Dale,” he said.
The girl gave a heliated laugh.
“Really? My first boyfriend was called Dale! What’s your last name?”
Pat tried to make one up, but his mind had gone blank.
“Watson.”
The girl pouted charmingly.
“No, he was Krumdiack. Crummy Dick, everyone called him, poor guy. Still, isn’t that amazing? I bet I know what sign you are, too. Gemini, right? I get along real good with Geminis, ’cos they’re kind of indecisive. I’m just the opposite, being an Aries. Can I come sit here beside you? The edge of this seat is killing my butt.”
It had started to rain, the drops transformed into streaky lines of water by the speed of the bus. Pat snuggled down in his seat. For the first time since his long trip began, he actually felt good. He knew this was wrong. He wasn’t supposed to be feeling good, not at this supreme moment of his life. But he couldn’t help it. And what difference could it make, after all? If stuff was meant to happen, it happened. If it wasn’t, it didn’t. That was the basis of the whole thing, so why give himself a hard time about feeling good? No one need ever know, anyway. Just because they all shared the big Secret didn’t mean he couldn’t have his own little one. He relaxed, feeling the warmth of the girl’s body beside him.
Kristine Kjarstad sat on the steps of her front porch, looking up at the sky, which was tinted an ethereal shade of peach. Although it was almost nine o’clock, the light was only just starting to fade. The mild, balmy air was perfumed with the odor of resin from branches cracked by Thomas, who had taken up residence in the tall cedar which grew next to the front fence. She could just see his head as he sat ensconced in his nest, reading about orea whales.
Summer was always a mixed blessing for a single mother. Once school was out, the whole business of organizing the day became an exhausting exercise in logistics and scheduling. This inevitably involved her ex-husband, whose meticulously organized agendas were just one of the many hurdles she was going to face in the coming months. To make matters even worse, Kristine had just learned that Clark and Donnie Wallis were going to Europe for four months.
The Wallises owned the house that backed on to Kristine’s, and their son Brent was Thomas’s best friend. Kristine thought Brent was kind of dorky, if the truth were told, but she recognized that he and Thomas together possessed the key to a magic kingdom she would never enter. They played happily for hours on end, massaging each other’s fantasies and fears in ways that were incomprehensible to any adult, but which kept them occupied and only rarely ended in tears. Clark Wallis had confided to Kristine that the relationship with Thomas had been “really helpful with Brent’s anger management.”
So when Donnie called with the news that Clark, a systems analyst with Microsoft, was being sent to Frankfurt to oversee the installation of a new computer network for a German bank, and that she and the kids were going along, Kristine felt as if the long-threatened Seattle earthquake had arrived, demolishing some structures, rendering others unsafe, and opening up giant fissures in the texture of her life. Donnie’s interest was in finding someone to rent their house, not an easy task given the short notice and limited period of availability.